Copyright of 1888 Ripper Photos

[Aldebaran]

If that summary is right and I have no reason to doubt it, than they are out of copyright.

However, that will only apply to the originals.

So if I use them in a book this year, the version in my book is in copyright, crazy isn't it. (that's my understanding of Brit copyright anyway) in effect it means if you can get the original it's fine to use but lifting a copy out my (imaginary book) isn't.

It may be true for all I know [I don't know the law in Britain] but it certainly doesn't make much sense. A creator [the photographer] can only take the image in question once. He has a copyright to that and can control what happens to copies of said image for the duration of his life. His copyright heirs can control that for X number of years after his death--and then the work goes into the Public Domain. It seems crazy that a work, now belonging to the public, can assume a new copyright once it appears, in a mainly unaltered state, in someone's book! The author of the book used it for the simple reason that its copyright had long lapsed and now, because it was used by someone who had no connection to its creation, nobody else can copy it? That seems to me to negate the whole principle of Public Domain. What if the original or some copy that existed in some also copyright lapsed old book happens to become destroyed? Then no one can use that image again without permission of the authors who used it in their newer books! They assume ownership. Truly bizarre.

[GUT]

It may be true for all I know [I don't know the law in Britain] but it certainly doesn't make much sense. A creator [the photographer] can only take the image in question once. He has a copyright to that and can control what happens to copies of said image for the duration of his life. His copyright heirs can control that for X number of years after his death--and then the work goes into the Public Domain. It seems crazy that a work, now belonging to the public, can assume a new copyright once it appears, in a mainly unaltered state, in someone's book! The author of the book used it for the simple reason that its copyright had long lapsed and now, because it was used by someone who had no connection to its creation, nobody else can copy it? That seems to me to negate the whole principle of Public Domain. What if the original or some copy that existed in some also copyright lapsed old book happens to become destroyed? Then no one can use that image again without permission of the authors who used it in their newer books! They assume ownership. Truly bizarre.

Get a copy, not from the new book and you're fine, copy it out of the book and you may have a problem.

And many laws don't make sense.

[GUT]

It may also (in fact will) by jurisdiction.